Privacy Policy

Who we are

Notch ("Notch", "we", "us", "our") is a personal finance application operated by Fahmy Abdi, sole proprietor, based in Ontario, Canada. For the purposes of Canadian privacy law we are the organization accountable for the personal information described in this policy.

Our Privacy Officer can be reached at support@usenotch.co. Privacy questions, access requests, and complaints all go to that address.

Information we collect

Information you give us

• Account and identity. Your email address, display name, and the identifier from your sign-in provider (Google, or an email and password you set). Used to authenticate you and associate your data with your account.
• Financial information you enter. Transactions you log by hand, budgets, savings goals and any notes on them, categories, payment-method labels, income sources, recurring charges, and balances you record yourself.
• Preferences. Your country and region (which set the sales-tax rate we apply), display currency, category limits, and feature settings.
• Correspondence. Anything you send us by email, including support requests.

Information we receive from your financial institutions

When you choose to link an account, we receive the following through Plaid Inc. ("Plaid"): account names, account types and sub-types, the last four digits of the account number ("mask"), the institution name, current and available balances, and transaction history, including the date, amount, merchant or description, and category of each transaction, plus the time of day where your institution reports it.

We never receive or store your online banking credentials. You enter those directly into Plaid's interface. Our access is read-only: we cannot move money, initiate payments, or view your full account or routing numbers.

Information collected automatically

• Device and technical data. Basic device information needed to operate and troubleshoot the app, and error diagnostics.
• Notification identifiers. If you enable purchase alerts, a device notification token so alerts can reach that device. Removed when you disable alerts.
• Website. Our marketing site at usenotch.co collects no personal information. It has no sign-up form, and we use no advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Why we use it

We use personal information only for the purposes below, and we identify any new purpose to you before using your information for it:

• To provide the service. Displaying balances and transactions, categorizing spending, tracking budgets, goals and recurring charges, calculating what you have available, and keeping your data synchronized across your devices.
• To maintain your bank connections. Refreshing linked account data and telling you when a connection needs your attention.
• To notify you, where you have turned notifications on, for example when a purchase is imported or a linked institution disconnects.
• To secure the service. Authenticating you, detecting misuse, and investigating security incidents.
• To support you when you contact us, and to meet legal or regulatory obligations.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. We do not use your financial information for advertising or marketing profiling, and we do not disclose it to advertisers or data brokers.

Your consent

We collect, use, and disclose your personal information with your consent. You give express consent when you create an account, when you link a financial institution, and when you turn on an optional feature such as notifications or the daily read.

You may withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal and contractual restrictions and reasonable notice, by unlinking an institution, turning a feature off, or closing your account. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal. Some withdrawals mean we can no longer provide part of the service; unlinking a bank, for example, ends automatic transaction imports.

Bank connections through Plaid

Notch uses Plaid Inc. to connect to financial institutions. When you link an account, Plaid collects your credentials directly and exchanges them for an access token that lets us retrieve account and transaction data on your behalf. That token is stored on our servers, is never exposed to the app or to any other user, and is deleted when you unlink the institution.

Your use of Plaid is also governed by Plaid's End User Privacy Policy, which describes Plaid's own handling of your information and is separate from this policy. We encourage you to read it before linking an account.

Our access is read-only and limited to balances and transactions. Notch cannot transfer funds, make payments, or open or close accounts.

The optional daily read

Notch offers an optional feature that generates a short daily summary of your finances. The feature is disabled unless you enable it, and it may be disabled again at any time in the application's settings.

What is sent when you enable it

When the feature is on, a summary of your financial data is sent to Anthropic PBC, which operates the Claude model that writes the reading. That summary can include: up to twelve months of your transaction records (date, time, amount, merchant, your own description, and category for each), your accounts and their balances, the institution and last four digits associated with each account, your savings goals and any notes on them, your income sources, your recurring charges, your category spending limits, and a summary of amounts owed across your credit cards.

It also includes working notes the model keeps between readings, so that what it tells you stays consistent over time. Those notes are stored with your account and are deleted when your account is deleted.

How that data is handled

Anthropic processes this information on our behalf as a service provider, for the sole purpose of returning the reading to you. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, data submitted through their API is not used to train their models. Anthropic processes data in the United States.

If you never switch this feature on, none of your financial information is sent to Anthropic at any time. If you turn the feature off we stop sending data, and you may ask us to delete the stored notes by writing to support@usenotch.co.

Service providers and disclosure

We do not sell your personal information or disclose it to third parties for their own purposes. We rely on the following service providers, each of which processes personal information only on our instructions and under contractual confidentiality and security obligations:

We may also disclose personal information where required by law, in response to a valid court order, subpoena, or lawful request from a government or regulatory authority; where necessary to establish or defend a legal claim; or to protect the rights or safety of a person. If Notch is ever involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction; we will notify you, and this policy will continue to apply until replaced.

Where your information is processed

Notch is operated from Canada, but our service providers store and process personal information on servers located in the United States. Your information is therefore subject to the laws of that country, and may be accessible to United States courts, law enforcement, or regulatory authorities under those laws.

By using Notch you consent to this transfer and processing. We use providers that offer contractual and technical safeguards comparable to those required in Canada. If you would prefer your information not be processed outside Canada, we cannot currently offer the service on that basis.

How we protect it

• In transit. All traffic between the app, our backend, and our providers is encrypted using TLS 1.2 or better.
• At rest. Data held on our backend is encrypted at rest by our infrastructure provider using AES-256. The copy of your ledger cached on your device is encrypted with a 256-bit key generated on that device and held in the device keystore.
• Isolation. Database rules scope every record to the account that owns it, so one user's data cannot be read by another. Server-only data, including bank access tokens, is unreadable and unwritable by any client application.
• Step-up authentication. Connecting, reconnecting, or unlinking a financial institution requires biometric confirmation (Face ID or Touch ID) on your device.
• Administrative access is limited to the operator, protected by multi-factor authentication, with credentials held in a managed secret store and never in our source code.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. We maintain safeguards proportionate to the sensitivity of the information and review them as the service grows.

How long we keep it

We retain personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes it was collected for, or as required by law.

• Your financial and account data is kept while your account is active.
• Bank access tokens are deleted immediately when you unlink an institution.
• Individual records are deleted when you delete them in the app.
• Everything associated with your account is deleted when you close it. We action deletion requests within 30 days of receiving them.
• Device-local data is removed when you sign out, clear the app's data, or uninstall it.

Residual copies may persist briefly in encrypted backups held by our infrastructure providers before being overwritten in the ordinary course.

Your rights

Under Canadian privacy law you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you, and be told how it has been used and to whom it has been disclosed.
• Correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete. Most of it you can edit directly in the app.
• Withdraw consent for any collection or use, subject to legal and contractual restrictions.
• Export your data. The app can produce a complete backup file of your information at any time.
• Delete your account and the information associated with it.
• Complain about how we handle your information.

Write to support@usenotch.co to exercise any of these. We respond within 30 days. We may need to confirm your identity before acting on a request. Access is provided free of charge unless a request is excessive, in which case we will tell you the cost before proceeding.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or to your provincial privacy regulator.

If something goes wrong

If a breach of our security safeguards creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and report the breach to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as soon as feasible, as PIPEDA requires. We maintain records of any such breach.

Children

Notch is not directed at children and is not intended for anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under that age. If you believe a child has provided us information, write to support@usenotch.co and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Notch develops. The version number and "last updated" date above will change. If a change materially affects how we handle your personal information, we will notify you in the app or by email before it takes effect, and where the law requires it we will ask for your consent again.

Contact

Privacy Officer, Notch
support@usenotch.co
Ontario, Canada

For the terms governing your use of the app, see our Terms of Service. Third-party names and trade-marks referred to in this policy are acknowledged in section 11 of those Terms.